Several products and in particular, prunes, frequently are sold after having the pits removed. Removal of the pits usually has been performed by one of several commercial apparatus available. While such presently-used pit removers are reasonably efficient in removing the pits from such products as prunes, experience shows that there are still some pits which go undetected with the product.
In the past such remaining product with pits usually has been detected to the extent possible by persons handling the product and attempting to pick out those which feel to be larger because of the presence of the pits. Such an approach not only is expensive but also is less than totally effective because it depends upon the skill of the person in detecting the remaining pits. It is the purpose of the present invention to provide a detector which is highly effective in detecting pits to enable their separation from the product stream.